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THE RECORD 



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DEMOCRATIC PARTY. 



1860-1865. 



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THE 

RECORD OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, 



1860—1865. 



-SECESSION AND RECONSTRUCTION. 



The War against Rebellion lias passed into history. Had it proved un- 
successful, the political party which has never ceased to predict its ill- 
success and to obstruct its progress would have claimed and secured, as 
the reward of its political sagacity, the management of our national affairs 
for a generation. To oppose a successful war, however, is likely, in a Ke- 
publio, to prove the destruction of any organization guilty of so unpatriotic 
a blunder, and the Democracy, which has thus proved its faithlessness to 
the great principles on which it was founded, is now seeking to obliterate 
the damning record of its course since the election of 1860. 

For a few months, indeed, after the fall of Sumter, the indignant energy 
of the people suppressed open manifestations of factious opposition. Since 
the surrender of the rebels and the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, also, the 
hopelessness of the cause of slavery and state rights has stilled all rising 
agitation ; and the mourning of a nation has forced those who lately attacked 
our late Chief Magistrate with ceaseless venom to beslime his memory with 
yet more nauseous praise. These scanty proofs of patriotism are now ap- 
pealed to in the hope that an easy public may in a few short years forget 
the consistent policy which lost no opportunity of embarrassing the Gov- 
ernment and encouraging the Rebellion, during the gloomy period when 
the national life hung in the balance and destruction seemed only to be 
averted by unanimous effort. It is not pleasant to reflect that a powerful 
party, which had for nearly half a century controlled the destinies of the 
country, has played so base and treasonable a part in the hour of peril; and 
the people will be ready to banish all memories of so disgraceful and 
humiliating a fact. It is important, however, that in the future we should 
know who are to be trusted and who to be shunned. The problems to be 



solved within the next ten years are too momentous to mankind to be con- 
fided to those who have proved themselves recreant alike to republicanism 
and to true democracy. It may therefore not be amiss to throw together, 
in a shape for preservation and convenient reference, a few of the innu- 
merable proofs that the great Democratic Party has throughout the contest 
been the consistent and faithful ally of the Rebellion ; that it invited se- 
cession, declared that coercion was unconstitutional and war illegal, and that 
it opposed every measure adopted by the nation to carry on the war — sus- 
pension of the habeas corj^us, conscription, emancipation, loans, legal ten- 
der money and taxation — everything, in fact, to which we owe the fortu- 
nate result of our unexampled struggle. 

HOW THE SOUTH WAS TEMPTED TO SECEDE. 

No one imagines that, had the South supposed that its revolt would 
have been resisted by an united and determined North, it would have 
plunged into the fiery gulf of rebellion. Its people were assured by their 
leaders that secession would be peaceful, that it was justifiable, that it was 
the only remedy lor innumerable wrongs, that any attempt by fanatical 
abolitionists to interfere with the movement would be met and neutralized 
by their Democratic allies in the North, and that eventually the Union 
would be reconstructed under a pro-slavery constitution of their own dic- 
tation, with New England left out, or only admitted as one consolidated 
state. How fully they were justified in promulgating these fatal errors 
can easily be proved by references to the utterances of chosen leaders of 
the Democracy. 

OFFERS OF ASSISTANCE TO REBELLION. 

Ex-President Franklin Pierce, in a letter to Jefferson Davis, as early as 
January 6, 1860, thus assured him that his Northern allies would be faith- 
ful to the last extremity. 

" I do not believe that our friends at the South have any just idea of the state 
of feeling, hurrying at this moment to the pitch of intense exasperation between 
those who respect their political obligations, and those who have apparently no 
impelling power but that which fanatical passion on the subject of domestic 
slavery imparts. Without discussing the question of right — of abstract power 
to secede, I have never believed that actual disruption of the Union can occur 
without blood ; and if through the madness of Northern Abolitionists that dire 
calamity must come, the fighting will not be along Mason and Dixon's line 
merely. It will be within our own borders, in our own streets, between the 
two classes of citizens to whom I have referred. Those loho defy law and scout 
constitutional obligations will, if ever we reach the arbitrament of arms, find oc- 
cupation enough at home." 



SECESSION JUSTIFIED. 

Few Democratic statesmen -were found bold enough to defend secepsion 
as a constitutional right, but the South \vas assured iu the most formal 
way that the wrongs inflicted on it were ample to justify .secession as a revo- 
lutionary remedy. 

Thus President Buchanan in his Message of December 3, ISGO, pro- 
claimed to the world, that 

" The long continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people 

with the question of slavery has at hngth produced its natural effects 

Self preservation is the firt^t law of nature, and has been inipUiuted in the heart 
of man by his Creator fur the wisest purposes, and no political union, however 
fraught with blessings and benefits in other respects, can long continue if the 
necessary consequences be to render the homes and the firesides of nearly half 
the parties to it habitually and hopelessly insecure. Sooner or later the bonds 
of such a Union must be severed." 

And, though he denied the constitutional right of'secession, he told the 
South, which at that moment was taking the preliminary steps to secede, 
that, if the "personal liberty bills" of some of the extreme Northern States 
were not repealed, 

" In that event, the injured States, after having first used all peaceful and 
constitutional means to obtain redress, tvmdd he justified in REYOhVTiONAKY re- 
sistance TO THE Government of tue Union." 

Well might Howell Cobb say, in a confidential letter to a Georgia 
editor : 

"I repeat to you that the administration of Mr. Buchanan is the most tho- 
roughly identified with our principles and our rights of any that has ever pre- 
ceded it, and I am willing to stand or fall upon the issue." 

After this hideous invitation to rebellion in the solemn state papers of 
our National Chief Magistrate, further proof would seem to be supererogatory, 
but a few utterances by other party leaders may be admitted to show that 
this doctrine was accepted by the Democracy, and was continually promul- 
gated both before and during the whole course of the war. 

Thus, on December 13, 1860, while the secession of South Carolina was 
rapidly maturing, Judge Woodward, the most prominent and trusted Demo- 
crat in Pennsylvania, profaned the sacred precincts of Independence Square 
with the following : 

" We must arouse ourselves and re-assert the rights of the slaveholder, and 
add such guarantees to our Constitution as will protect his property from the 
the spoliation of religious bigotry and persecution, or else we must give up our 
Constitution and Union. Events are placing the alternative plainly before us — 
constitutional union and liberty according to American law ; or else, extinction 
of slave property, negro freedom, dissolution of the Union, and anarchy and 
confusion We hear it said, Let South Carolina go out of the 



Union peaceably. I .say, let her gi) peaceably if she go at all, but Avhy should 
South Carolina be driven out of the Uuiou by an irrepressible conflict about 
slavery 1" 

And not only was the speaker endorsed by receiving the Democratic 
nomination for Governor of Pennsylvania in 1863, but this speech was 
declared in the address of the Democratic State Central Committee in 
August, 1863, to have "been vindicated by subsequent events as a signal 
exhibition of statesmanlike sagacity ;" it was reprinted by that Committee 
and circulated throughout the State by thousands, as the purest embodi- 
ment of the Democratic creed, with a preface in which the Chairman of 
that Committcfi, Charles J. Biddle, declared his belief that no intelligent 
man " will fail to see in it the wisdom and foresight of a statesman such as 
the Commonwealth now needs in the direction of its affairs." 

In the same spirit, the address of the Democratic State Central Commit- 
tee in 1863, assures us, that 

"The substantial interests of the South, especially the slaveholding interest, 
were rdudaidly drawn into secession." On the other hand, the Abolitionists 
" counted on an oa^-y triumph through the aid of revolted slaves, and, in this re- 
liance, were careless how soon they provoked a collision. . . . To cover up their 
own tracks, they invite us to spend all our indignation upon ' Southern traitors;' 
but truth compels us to add that, in the race of treason, the Northern traitors 
to the Constitution had the start." 

So, on the 16th of January, 1861, the Democratic Party of Philadelphia, 
assembled at a great meeting in National Hall, while State after State was 
defiantly passing ordinances of secession, and seizing' forts, arsenals, dock- 
yards and custom-houses. They had no word of reprobation for Southern 
treason, but, in the series of resolutions adopted, they declared their party 
faith to be that the citizens of Pennsylvania should 

" Determine with whom their lot shall be cast ; whether with the North and 
East whose fanaticism has precipitated this misery upon us, or with our brethren 
of the South, whose wrongs we feel as our own." 

So, the Detroit Free Press, a Democratic organ, April 16, 1862 : 

" History will relate that we," (the North), " manufactured the conflict, 
forced it to hotbed precocity, nourished and invited it." 

So, too, Edward Ingersoll, in an address to the Democratic Central 
Club of Philadelphia, delivered June 13, 1863, when Lee was on the bor- 
ders of Pennsjlvania : 

" Until the spirit of disunion and hatred, which is Abolitionism, is put down 
in our midst, government, which alone can give us peace, is impossible. Don't 
trouble yourselves about the disunion spirit in the South ; don't trouble your- 
selves about the Southern Confederacy ; take the beam out of your own eye ; we 
will find political occupation enough at home for some time to come. When 
the Federal Administration ceases to be a government, and represents nothing 
but the instinct of hatred and destruction against one section of our country, 



that section unsehj and naturalhj concentrates the irhole viijor of its iiatnn 
resistance." 



PLANS FOR BREAKING UP THE UNION. 

Mr. Buchanan had formally declared, in his Message of December, 18G0, 
that there was no constitutional right of secession. His party thereupon 
commenced to agitate plans by which the South could be coaxed back into 
a Uuiou wherein the right to secede should be legalized. The most notori- 
ous of these schemes was that introduced into Congress by Mr. Vallandig- 
ham, proposing a constitutional amendment by which the Uuiou should be 
peacefully divided, as follows : 

" Article XIII. Section I. The United States are divided into four sections, 
as follows : 

" The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Is- 
land, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania shall 

constitute one section, to be known as the North. 

" The States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, 

Iowa and Kansas, shall constitute another section, to be kuowQ as 

the West. 

"The States of Oregon and California sTiall constitute another sec- 
tion, to be known as the Pacific. 

" The States of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Caro- 
lina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Ten- 
nessee, Kentucky and Missouri .... shall constitute another section, to be 
known as the South. 

'' Article XIV. No State shall secede without the consent of the Legislatures 
of all the States of the section to which the State proposing to secede belongs. 
The President shall have power to adjust with seceding States all questions 
arising by reason of their secession ; but the terms of adjustment shall be sub- 
mitted to* Congress for their approval before the same shall be valid." 

This artful scheme for legalizing secession was well received by the Demo- 
cratic leaders. Mr. George H. Pendleton, the Chicago candidate for the 
Vice-Presi'dency, defended it in the House of Representatives as late as 
January, 1863. May 9, 18(33, Mr. Wall, Democratic Senator from New 
Jersey, in an address to the Democratic Central Club of Philadelphia, not 
only did not hesitate to give it his hearty approval, but declared that it, 
or some similar scheme, was the only alternative to eternal separation! 

" The plan suggested some years ago by Mr. Vallandigham bears the stamp 
of his clear sagacity and statesmanlike forecast — dividing the country into four 
large sections or masses, and requiring a majority of the representation from 
each to consent to a measure before it should become a law. Mr. Calhoun, not- 
withstanding the undeaerved obloquy now attaching to his name, was to my 
mind the most honest and comprehensive statesman who grappled with national 
problems, and I make bold here to say that no wiser, purer, patriotic statesman 
ever lived. It may be that the South might be willing to return upon the 
adoption of some such system of reconstruction as this. If this plan of recon- 
ciliation and reconstruction fails, then a separation must be the finality." 



Mr. Vallandighaiu's scheme for breaking up tlie Union having been 
rejected by Congress and the people, other plans were agitated. A 
Northwestern Confederacy was freely spoken of, and for a long "while the 
rebels had confident hope of the success of their agents in that direction, 
working in co-operation with their Democratic allies. It was not difficult 
for that party to find justification for this or any other destructive plot. 

Judge Black, Mr. Buchanan's Attorney General, even went so far as to 

declare that war made by Congress upon a seceding State would legalize 

secession and dissolve the union of the remaining States. In an official 

opinion, dated November 20, 18(30, only a fortnight after Mr. Lincoln's 

election, and which through the traitors in the cabinet was of course 

made known to the traitors organizing rebellion throughout the South, he 

says : 

"If it be true that war cannot be declared, nor a system of general hostilities 
carried on hy the Central Government against a State, then it seems to follow 
that an attempt to do so would be ijiso facto, an expulsion of such State from 
the Union, being treated as an alien and an enemy, she would be compelled to 
act accoi'dingly. And if Congress shall break up the pre.>;ent Union by uncon- 
stitutionally putting strife and enmity and armed hostility between different 
sections of the country, instead of the ' domestic tranquility' which the Consti- 
tution Avas meant to insure, will not all the States he absolved from their Federal 
obligations ^ Is any portion of the people bound to contribute their money or 
their bluod to carry on a contest like that ?" 

The Syracuse Convention, in August, 1864, under the lead of Mr. Vallan- 
digham, drew the same conclusion from different premises, and openly 
declared the revolutionary doctrine. 

" Resolved, That ... it (the administration) has denied to sovereign States 
constitutional rights, and thereby absolved them from all allegiance." 

COERCION UNCONSTITUTIONAL. 

Had the Union men of the South felt that they would receive the sup- 
poi't of the Government to the last extremity, they might have success- 
fully resisted the tide of secession which swept over the Gulf States in the 
winter of 1860-1861. In place of this, they were abandoned to the tender 
mercies of the fire-eating chivalry, and were plainly told that there was no 
authority in the Constitution to interfere with rebellion. Thus, Mr. Bu- 
chanan, in his Message of December 3, 1860, declared, 

" The question fairly stated is : Has the Constitution delegated to Congress 
the right to coerce a State into submission, which is attempting to withdraw 
or has actually withdrawn from the Confederacy ? If answered in the affirma- 
tive, it must be upon the principle that power has been conferred upon Con- 
gress to declare or to make war upon a State. After much serious reflection, I 
have arrived at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Con- 
gress or to any other department of the Federal Government Without 

descending to particulars, it may safely be asserted that the power to make 



war against a State is at variance with the whole spirit of the Constitution. 
.... Congress possesses many means of preserving it (the Union), by con- 
ciliation, but the sword was not placed in their hands to preserve it by force." 

This direct invitation to rebellion by a promise of immunity, was at 
once taken up by those who have ever since controlled the policy of the 
Democratic Party. 

On the 3d of January, 1861, at a " Union" meeting held in Philadelphia, 
the Hon. Ellis Lewis, a well known and influential Democrat, introduced 
a series of resolutions, in which the right of secession was denied, but after 
blaming the North for its unconstitutional proceedings, it .concluded : 

" Resolved, That if the Northern States should be unwilling to recognize their 
constitutional duties towards the Southern States, it would be right to acknow- 
ledge the independence of the Southern States, instead of waging an unlawful 
war against them." 

And at the great meeting of the Philadelphia Democracy, held January 
16, after the firing on the "Star of the West" in Charleston harbor, 
among the resolutions enthusiastically adopted was the following : 

" Tenth. That we cordially approve the disavowal by the President, in his 
last annual message, for himself and for Congress, of a war-making power 
against a State of the Confederacy, thus reaffirming the express doctrine of two 
of the great founders of the Constitution, James Madison and Alexan(^r 
Hamilton." 

These views were formally adopted by the party. On January 18, 
the Military Committee reported to the House of Representatives a bill to 
provide for calling out the Militia, when Mr. George H. Pendleton op- 
posed it by an elaborate argument, in which he said : 

" Now, sir, what force of arms can compel a State to do that which she has 
agreed to do ? What force of arms can compel a State to refrain from doing 
that which her State government, supported by the sentiment of her people, is 

determined to persist in doing Sir, the whole scheme of coercion is 

impracticable. It is contrary to the genius and spirit of the Constitution. . . 

. . My voice to-day is for conciliation ; my voice is for compromise. I beg 
you, gentlemen, to hear that voice. If you will not, if you tind conciliation im- 
possible ; if your diiferences are so great that you cannot or will not compro- 
mise them, then, gentlemen, let the seceding States depart in peace ; let them 
establish their government and empire, and work out their destiny according 
to the wisdom which God has given them." 

And, in the division which followed, the Democratic members, with but 
four exceptions, registered their agreement with Mr. Pendleton in a solid 
body. 

It was for such doctrines as these that the great Democratic Party se- 
lected Mr. Pendleton as its standard bearer in the presidential contest of 
1864. That these views were regarded as a sure passport to its favor is 
evident when we see them advanced by so shrewd and unscrupulous a 



8 

politician as Mr. William B. Reed, who, on the 28th of March, 1863, in 
an address to the Democratic Central Club of Philadelphia, observed : 

" Had the Government never gone beyond the limits of consent ; liad it re- 
jected, as did its founders, the heresy of coercion, as a])plied to any State 
or combination of States, it would have been far stronger in the elements of 
republican power, than it is now in all the panoply and parade of war." 

Even three years of war did not suffice to cause the abandonment of this 

dogma. The Democratic Convention of Kentucky, assembled June 28, 

1864, to select delegates to the Chicago Convention, adopted a series of 

resolutions, among which the following is the third : 

"Guided by these lights, we declare that the coercion and subjugation of 
eleven or more sovereign States was never contemplated as possible or author- 
ized by the Constitution, but was pronounced by its makers an act of suicidal 
folly." 

And Mr. William B. Reed reiterated his views in a letter to a sympa- 
thetic Mary lander, dated November 5, 1861, and published November 7, 
as sound Democratic doctrine by the Philadelphia organ of the party : 

" I deny as I have ever done since this experiment of civil war has awakened 
me to the truth, that the Federal Government has any right under the Con- 
stitution to coerce by force of arms any one or more of its great constituncies." 

• PRO-SLAVERY RECONSTRUCTION. 

So far from maintaining the indissoluble nature of the Federal bond, 
the Democratic Party at an early period in the struggle adopted the theory 
that the secession of the South absolved the remaining States from all fur- 
ther obligation to the Constitution, and that they were individually at 
liberty to separate and set up for themselves or form new connections on 
such terms of alliance as they might please. There can be but little doubt 
that the ultimate object of this scheme was to reorganize under the Mont- 
gomery Constitution, whereby the old supremacy of the alliance between 
slavery and democracy might be restored, and the domination of the 
party be perpetuated. The key-note to this will be found in one of the 
resolutions adopted at the great Democratic meeting in Philadelphia, held 
January 16, 1861. We have the authority of Mr. William B. Reed, for 
the assertion that " it was adopted with enthusiastic unanimity.'' 

• ''Resolved, That in the deliberate judgment of the Democracy of Philadel- 
phia, and, so far as we know it, of Pennsylvania, the dissolution of the Union 
by the separation of the whole South, a result we shall most sincerely deplore, 
may release this Commonwealth from the bonds which now connect it with 
the confederacy, and icould authorize and require its citizens, through a conven- 
tion to be assembled for that purpose, to determine with whom their lot shall 
be cast ; whether with the North and East whose fanaticism has precipitated 
this misei'y upon us, or with our brethren of the South, whose wrongs we feel 
as our own, or whether Pennsylvania shall stand by herself, ready, when oc- 
casion offers, to bind together tlie broken Union." 



That these were the views of the dominant men of the party is evident 
from the fact that Judge Woodward at that time made no secret of his de- 
sire that Pennsylvania should go with the South. 

So, in the spring of 1861, ex-Governor Price, of New Jersey, in a letter 
to L. W. Burnet, of Newark, argued the matter thus : 

" I believe the Southern Confederation permanent. The proceeding has been 
taken witli forethought and deliberation — it is no hurried impulse, but an inevi- 
table act, based upon the sacred, as was supposed, ' equality of the States;' and 
in my opinion, every slave State will, in a short tinie, be lound united in oue 
confederacy. . . . Before that event happens, we cannot act, however much we 
may suffer in our material interests. It is in that contingency, then, that I 
answer the second part of your question. ' What position for New Jersey will 
best accord with her interests, honor, and the patriotic instincts of her peo- 
ple.' I say emphaticaUy, they loould go with the South, from every wise, pruden- 
tial and patriotic reason." 

At the time of the Chicago Convention, these views were not so openly 
ventilated, but they evidently were at the bottom of the reconstruction con- 
templated by the "cessation of hostilities" and *' convention of all the 
States" advocated in the platform. One speaker, however, D. II. Mahoney, 
of Dubuque, Iowa, was bold enough to enunciate them, and they were 
favorably received, 

" We must elect our candidate, and then, holding out our hands to the South, 
invite them to come and sit again in our Union circle. [A voice — ' Suppose 
they won't come ?'] If they will not come to us, then 1 am in favor of going to 
them." [Loud cheers.] 

And the Van Buren County Press, at Paw-Paw, Michigan, declared ; 

" If the North and South are ever re-united, we predict it will be when the 
Confederate States North adopt their new ('Montgomery') constitution, or some- 
thing very near like it. There's a good time coming boys." 

DISUNION CONVENTIONS. 

As indicated by the resolutions quoted above from the Philadelphia 
platform of June 16th, 1861, the machinery by which this scheme was to 
be carried out, was that of conventions, either State or National. The 
party therefore commenced to agitate for conventions. The experience 
of the South had shown how easy it was under skillful manipulation, with 
such instruments, to carry State after State into open and armed opposition 
to the central authority. A national convention might reconstruct the 
Union on a Southern basis at one blow, or a series of State conventions could 
accomplish the same result piecemeal, while crippling fatally the Govern- 
ment in its struggle with rebellion. The machinery of the party, therefore, 
was forthwith set to work. 

As early as July 15th, 1861, the project was broached by the Hon. 



10 

Benjamin "Wood in the following resolution oflPered in the House of 
Representatives, which received the vote of every Democratic member : 

" Resolved, That this Congress recommend the Governors of the several 
States to convene their Legislatures for the purpose of calling an electiun to 
select two delegates from each Congressional District, to meet in general Con- 
vention at Louisville in Kentucky, on the first Monday in September next ; 
the purpose of the said Convention to be to devise measures for the restoration 
of peace to our country." 

The revolutionary project was allowed to sleep for a year, when the dis- 
asters of the Peninsular campaign encouraged an attempt to revive it. 

Mr. William B. Reed came forward to feel the way. In August, 1862, 
he published his " Vindication," in which he affected to believe that a res- 
toration of the Union was impossible, and that all that remained for us was 
to decide upon the new leagues which should be formed. To accomplish this, 
he preferred separate State action. 

" If the choice be between a continuance of the war, with its attendant suf- 
ferings and demoralization, certain miseries and uncertain results, and a recog- 
nition of the Southern Confederacy, I am in favor of recognition, of course 
making the Abolition Party responsible for this dread necessity. The blood 
of the Union is on them. 

" If it be a choice between the slow but ultimately successful conduct of the 
war, the subjugation of the Southern States, their tenure as mere military pro- 
vinces, involving of course a radical change in the political organization of the 
triumphant North, so as virtually to abrogate State rights and create a central- 
ized domination with all the heresies of the day engrafted, and peaceable recog- 
nition, I still prefer recognition. 

" If the inquiry be further pressed as to how I would arrange the terms of 

pacification and recognition I do not hesitate to say that, dodge or defer 

it as we may, in my opinion the decision — I mean as to limits and possibly as 
to debt — must be made by the States and their citizens, acting as they did, 
when seventy years ago they entered into the Federal compact. There is no 
other conceivable mode. Maryland and Kentucky, after all, each for herself, 
will have to determine where her lot shall be cast, and what her pecuniary li- 
ability must be, whether for a share of the Federal or of the Confederate debt, 
or whether to be exempt from both. Wliat Maryland and Kentucky do, Penn- 
sylvania and Ohio have a right to do. This settles the question of boundaries, 
and nothing else will ; and if the decision involves the abandonment of AVash- 
ington, and leaving it the monument of what was once the Capital of a great 
Republic, be it so. I would rather see it a ruin than what it is now." 

In November, Mr. Reed returned to the charge, and openly suggested 

the raising of the standard of revolt by the Middle States. 

"Yet should, in the providence of God, the spirit of topical fanaticism which 
has brought all this misery upon us still maintain its sway, it may be the des- 
tiny of these great Middle States to speak, and if need be to act, in self-defence 
in maintenance of all that is left of Constitutional liberty in the fragmentary 
and shattered Union which yet survives. They may act together, or they may 
act separately. Within each of them is the perfect machinery of Government, 
and all that is wanting is an animating and practical spirit of local loyalty. It 
may be that one man can supply that spirit: and it is the hope that these fugi- 
tive words of earnest suggestion rather than of counsel, may find an answer in 
the heart of the people, that they are given to the public." 



11 

These utterances are valuable as aflfording us a key to the conferences 
between Lord Lyons, the English Minister, and the leading Democrats 
of New York, in November, 1862. The party had been elated with its 
success in carrying the State of New York a few days before, and had been 
both depressed and irritateid by the dismissal of McClellan. Lord Lyons' 
official disoatch states : 

" Several of the leaders of the Democratic Party sought interviews with me 
both before and after the arrival of the intelligence of General McClellan's dis- 
missal. The subject uppermost in their minds while they were speaking to me 
was naturally that of foreign mediation between the North and the South. 
Many of them appeared to think that this mediation must come at last, but they 

appeared to he very much afraid of its coming too soon I gave no opinion 

on the subject. I did not say whether or not I myself thought foreio-n interven- 
tion probable or advisable ; but I listened with attention to the account given 
me of the plans and hopes of the Conservative party. At the bottom, I thouo-ht I 
perceived a desire to put an end to the war, even at the risk of losin"- the South- 
ern States altogether ; but itwas plain that it was not thought prudont to avow 
this desire. Indeed, some hints of it dropped before the elections were so ill- 
received, that a strong declaration in a contrary sense was deemed necessary 
by the Democratic leaders. 

" They maintain that the object of the military operations should be to place 
the North in a position to demand an armistice with honor and effect. The 
armistice should, they hold, be followed by a Convention, in which suchchano-es 
in the Constitution should be proposed as would give the South absolute secu- 
rity in its slave property, and would enable the North and the South to reunite 
and to live together in peace and harmony. The Conservatives profess to think 
that the South might be induced to take part in such a Convention, and that a 
restoration of the Union would be the result. The most sa<:;aciou3 members of 
the party must, however, look upon the proposal of a Convention merely as a 
last experiment to test the possibility of reunion. They are, no doubt, well 
aware that the more probable consequence of an armistice would be the' esta- 
blishment of Southern independence, but they perceive that if the South is so 
utterly alienated that no possible concessions will induce it to return volun- 
tarily to the Union, it is wiser to agree to separation than to prosecute a cruel 
and hopeless war. 

" If their own party were in power, or virtually controlled the Administra- 
tion, they would rather, if possible, obtain an armistice without the aid of 
foreign governments; but they would be disposed to accept an offer of medi- 
ation, if it appeared to be the only means of putting a stop to hostilities." 

These humiliating negotiations with the agent of a foreign and unfriendly 
power show that Mr. Reed had only been the mouth-piece of the secret 
councils of his party. He, too, had urged an armistice as a necessary pre- 
liminary to the contemplated surrender. 

" I would begin with a cessation of hostilities and an armistice for a fixed 

period, not too short If arms were laid down for a time, there would' be 

a repugnance to take them up again, which, of itself, would be favorable to 
satisfactory adjustment." 

Thus was inaugurated the policy of a "cessation of hostilities" and a 
Convention, to which the Democratic party steadily adhered. At Chicago 



12 

two years later, it formed the basis of the platform, and in November, 
1864, it was indignantly rejected by the people. During those two years 
it was constantly put forward that the people might become accustomed to 
it, and no longer dread the fearful anarchy which would be its almost 
necessary result. 

Thus, at the formal inauguration of the Democratic Central Club, of 
Philadelphia, with which the party celebrated the 8th of January, 1863, 
the orator of the day, Mr. Charles Ingersoll, made the proposed Conven- 
tion the subject of his discourse, and was prepared to adopt the most revo- 
lutionary means of attaining the object. 

" There is but one way of arriving at a solution of the question as to whether 
we are to have a speedy peace and union, and that is by conventions of the 
people. To effect this is not easy of accomplishment, because, throughout the 
North there are many States in possession of the Republicans, and there is 
hardly any State in which the Democrats are wholly in power. In this State 
the Democrats have the Governor and Senate against them, with the House in 
their favor. Under these circumstances, we should do what has frequently been 
resorted to in England — ive should refuse the siqjplies. The speaker advocated 
this measure at some length as a means of instituting a State Convention. This 
would be followed by Conventions throughout the Northern States. We should 
then be in a position to offer our terms a,nd settle with the South this great 
question. Mr. Ingersoll concluded amid prolonged applause." 

In March, Mr. Ingersoll again urged the subject in an address delivered 
before the same body, and on the 28th of the same month, Mr. Reed also 
recurred to it on a similar occasion. His remarks, though somewhat 
obscure, are fearfully suggestive. 

" The path which I desire to pursue to take me out of the miseries and op- 
pressions upon us is one which the Constitution prescribes — a popular Conven- 
tion — National, if it can be, if not National, a State Convention. But I look 
vpon a Convention as an end, not as a means; for, as a means, it is too slow. 
We shall bleed to death before a Convention can be instituted. Still, it is a 

good ultimate restdt Such conventions emanating from and directly 

representing the people, would have adef(uate power. They would be as the 
Convention that made the Constitution, l^hey would cha^ige, modify, abrogate." 

We are thus prepared to understand the authorized exposition of Demo- 
cratic policy, as published to the world at Chicago, and can appreciate what 
was meant by the second resolution of the platform, where the war was 
explicitly declared to have been a failure 

"Resolved, That this Convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the 
American people, that, after four years of failure to restore the Union by the 
experiment of war, during which, under the pretence of a military necessity of 
a war power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been dis- 
regarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, 
and the material prospei-ity of the country essentially impaired, justice, hu- 
manity, liberty, and the public welfiire demand that immediate eflibrts be made 
for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate Convention of all the 



13 

States, or other peaceable means to the end that at the earliest practicable 
moment peace may be restored on the liasis of the Federal Union of the States." 

It is no wonder that the rebels, in their terrible straits, hailed the " ray 

of liiiht from Chicap;o." There is a wonderful similarity between the 

words of Alexander H. Stephens, when treating of such a Convention in 

his letter of Oct. 16, 1864, and those which we have already quoted from 

Mr. Reed's " Vindication." 

"All questions of boundaries, confederacies and union or unions would 
naturally and easily adjust themselves, according to the interests of parties and 
the exigencies of the times. Herein lies the true law of the balance of power 
and the harmony of States." 

So, too, the Hon. W. W. Boyce, of South Carolina, in a letter to Jeffer- 
son Davis, Sept. 29, 1864— 

" I think our only hope of a satisfactory peace, one consistent with the pre- 
servation of free institutions, is in the supremacy of this (the Democratic) 
party, at some time or other. Our policy, therefore, is to give this party all 
the capital we can. You should, therefore, at once, in my opinion, give this 
party all the encouragement possible, by declaring your willingness to an arm- 
istice and a Convention of all the States, in their sovereign capacity, to enter 
upon the subject of peace. 

" It may be said, the proposed convocation of the States is unconstitutional. 
To this I reply, we can amend the Constitution. It may be further objected 
that to meet the Northern States in convention is to abandon our present form 
of government. But this no more follows than that their meeting us implies 
an abandonment of their form of government. A Congress of the States in 
their sovereign capacity is the highest acknowledgment of the principles of 
State Rights." 

Mr. Stephens was suspected of being weak in the knees, and, on Nov. 
14, 1864, when a frank exposition of his views could no longer injure the 
prospects of McClellan, he communicated to the press another letter, dated 
Nov. 5, 1864, in which he gave his reasons for desiring the Convention, 
as proposed at Chicago. A paragraph in this remarkable document shows 
in the clearest light the results expected, North and South, from the co- 
operation of the States Rights Democracy with rebellion, and the fearful 
abyss which we escaped by the re-election of Mr. Lincoln. 

" There is no prospect of such proposition (a Convention of the States) 
being tendered, unless McClellan should be elected. He cannot be elected 
without carrying a sufficient number of the States, which, if united with those 
of the Confederacy, would make a majority of the States. In such a Conven- 
tion, then, so formed, have we not strong reasons to hope and expect that a 
resolution could be passed denying the constitutional power of the Government, 
under the compact of 1787, to coerce a State? The Chicago platform virtually 
does this already. Would not such a convention probably reaffirm the Ken- 
tucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798 and 1799? Are these not strong 
reasons, at least, to induce us to hope and believe that they might? If even 
that could be done, it would end the war. It would recognize as the funda- 
mental principle of American institutions the ultimate absolute sovereignty of 
the several States. This fully covers our independence — as fully as I ever wish 



14 

to see it covered. I wish no other kind of recognition, whenever it comes, than 
that of George III. of England, viz : the recognition of the sovereignty and in- 
dependence of each State separately and by name." 

The same ground was taken by the Hon. H. W. Hilliard, of Georgia. 

" It seems to me plain that we should accept the forum indicated by the Chi- 
cago Convention, as the appropriate one for the settlement of our troubles. The 
very proposal to refer the settlement of the great quarrel to the arbitrament of 
a convention, composed of delegates from all the States, is the most emphatic 
recognition of sovereignty of the States. They would assemble as sovereigns. 
They would discuss the grounds of difference between them as sovereigns. 
They would adjust their political relations independently. Closing their de- 
liberations, they would refer the measures they had matured to the people of 
the several States for final action." 

Thus, by the mere fact of their assembling, the Union would be resolved 
into a mass of independent jarring nationalities, and they would then pro- 
ceed, as Mr. Reed told us, "to change, modify, ABROGATE." 

SYMPATHY WITH THE SOUTH. 

Entertaining these views, and cherishing these schemes, it was natural 
that the Democracy should look upon the Southern leaders with sympathy 
and respect, and should endeavor to divert the antipathy of the people 
from them to the Administration. Thus the following, from the Philadel- 
phia Age of Sept. 23, 1864, palliates the rebellion and its chief by esta- 
blishing a parallel with the Revolution and George Washington. 

" They (the Yankees) have lately added to their collection the Bible of Mary 
Washington, the mother of a certain slaveholder named George, who made 
himself notorious some years back in a little rebellion which was got up in this 
country. Mary's Bible was very properly stolen from Arlington and carried 
to New England, for if she had read it in the spirit of the enlightened thief 
whose library it now decorates, she would have taught George better than to 
hold slaves and lead rebellions." 

So the same journal of Dec. 7, 1863, in commenting on General Meigs 
account of the battle of Lookout Mountain, observes — 

" It was shining — this full moon of the Tennessee mountains — on other con- 
trasts. It shines, as General Meigs is quite aware, on the great joker at Wash- 
ington and his truculent War Minister — and it shines, too, on the stern, 
attenuated and resolved rebel at Richmond, whom General Meigs, of all men 
in the world, would be most sorry to encounter, and who, when the name of 
Meigs and others are mentioned, must thrill sadly on this world's ingratitude." 

This comparison of the national with the rebel authorities, to the dis- 
advantage of the former, has been a favorite with the Democracy. Thus 
the same journal, the Age, of Feb. 6, 1864, inquires: 

" Is it any worse to fire at our flag than it is to fire into our Constitution ? 
.... And now we take upon ourselves to say, that while the rebels, at Sum- 
ter, fired at the flag, Mr. Lincoln, in his sphere, has fired into the Constitution, 



15 

and has literally attempted its destruction. If the rebels, for firing at the flag, 
deserve to be devastated by war, what punishment should be visited upon the 
President for firing into the Constitution ?" 

And Mr. William B. Reed, in a letter to the Hon. E. F. Chambers, of 
Maryland, published in the Age, Nov. 7, 1864, draws a picture of the 
time when, in case Mr. Lincoln should be re-elected, 

" Lee and Beauregard, Johnson and Longstreet, and Breckinridge and Ewell 
and Early are killed, or captured, or fled to the mountains, or gone, like the 
unfortunate but gallant Jacobites, like Berwick and Sarsfield, into foreign ser- 
vice," while "the work of conquest, or even subjugation, if that be the wretched 
word," is entrusted " to the unsaturated Molochs whom three years of bloody, 
fruitless warfare have not satisfied." 

So the Philadelphia Evening Journal of Jan. 20, 1863, commences an 
elaborate article devoted to the praises of Jefierson Davis, as follows: 

" The third annual message of Jefi'erson Davis to the Confederate Congress 
and Abraham Lincoln's last message to the United States Congress, provoke a 
comparison quite damaging to the intellectual capacity of the Federal Presi- 
dent." 

At the great ratification meeting of the Chicago nominations, held in 
Philadelphia Sept. 17, 1864, the Hon. Emerson Etheridge made a speech, 
in which he said, as officially reported in the Age, 

" There is not an honest man in my State, there is not a man with an honest 
reputation who will vote for Abraliam Lincoln. [Laughter and cheers.] They 
think the unlawful despotism of Jefferson Davis is no more unconstitutional 
and dangerous than the arbitrary usurpations of Abraham Lincoln. [That's 
so, and applause.] .... Before the war, no Southern man ever made war 
upon our liberties until Northern aggression converted them from our friends 
to our foes, and to-day, Abraham Lincoln stands, according to his own confes- 
sion, as much opposed to the restoration of the Union as Jefferson Davis. Lin- 
coln says they cannot come back unless under an unconstitutional condition, 
while Jefferson Davis says he will not come back unless he can have his own 
way. Now who is the worst traitor, Jefferson Davis or Abraham Lincoln? 
[Cries of 'Lincoln,' and cheers.]" 

Even the Hon. S. S. Cox, of Ohio, who was the leader in Congress of 
what was called the War Democracy, while professing opposition to the 
rebels, in his Chicago speech denounced the Administration with equal 
or greater bitterness. 

"For less offences than Mr. Lincoln had been guilty of, the English people 
had chopped off' the head of the first Charles. In his opinion, Lincoln and 
Davis ought to be brought tj the same block together. The other day, they 
arrested a friend of his, a member of Congress from Missouri, for saying, in 
private conversation, that Lincoln was no better than Jeff. Davis. He was 
ready to say the same here now in Chicago. Let the minions of the Adminis- 
tration object, if they dare." 

At a Democratic celebration in New York, April 13, 1865, just after 
Lee'-s surrender, and the day before the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, Mr. 



16 

Edward Ingersoll, of Philadelphia, made a speech, reported in full in the 
New York News, in which he said : 

*' I yield to no man in sympathy for the people of the South — a gallant peo- 
ple struggling nobly for their liberty against as sordid and vile a tyranny as 
ever proposed the degi'adation of our race. Nay, I go further, and with Jef- 
ferson, Madison, and Livingston, I fully embrace the doctrine of secession as 
an American doctrine, without the element of which American institutions 
cannot permanently live." 

Thus, in the beginning, the Democracy invited secession, and, to the 
end, it encouraged rebellion with sympathy and prospects of ultimate suc- 
cess. Let us now turn to the relations held by the party to the Govern- 
ment which was fighting the desperate battle for national life. 



17 



IL_OPPOSITION. 

Every measure adopted by the Administration to suppress the rebellion 
was honored by the hearty opposition of the Democracy, which spared no 
effort to influence the people against those to whom was entrusted the safety 
of the nation during its hour of trial. The war itself received their heartiest 
condemnation. 

THE DEMOCRACY A PEACE PARTY. 

It is true there was a wing of the party, known as "War Democrats," but 
they were powerless, and such as attempted independence of action were 
promptly read out of the party. The peace men controlled the organiza- 
tion and policy of the party, and the war men never failed to support them 
at the polls. Practically, the party was a unit in favor of peace ; and in 
this it was consistent from first to last. 

At the great Democratic meeting of January 16, 1861, at Philadelphia, 
the ninth resolution adopted declared, 

" We are therefore utterly opposed to any such compulsion as is demanded 
by a portion of the Republican Party; and 'the Democratic Party of the North 
will, by the use of all constitutional means, and witli its moral and political 
influence, oppose any such extreme jwlicy, or a fratricidal war thus to be 
inaugurated." 

And a month later, at the Democratic State Convention, held at Harris- 
burg, February 22, 1861, the following resolution "was received with the 
most rapturous applause, nearly all the members of the Convention risin'^-, 
cheering, and waving their hats." 

"■Resolved, That we will, by all proper and legitimate means, oppose, dis- 
countenance and prevent any attempt on the part uf the Republicans in power 
to make any armed aggression upon the Southern States, especially so lono- as 
laws contravening their rights shall remain unrepealed on the statute books of 
Northern States, and so long as the just demands of the South shall continue 
to be unrecognized by the republican majorities in these States, and unsecured 
by pi'oper amendatory explanations of the Constitution." 

It was in precisely the same spirit that Benjamin G. Harris, a Demo- 
cratic member of Congress from Maryland, on April 9, 1864, had the 
effrontery to declare in the House of Piepresentatives : 

" The South asked you to let them go in peace. But no ; you said you would 
bring them into subjection. That is not done yet, and God Almighty grant 
that it never may be. I hope that you will never subjugate the South." 



18 

This being good Democratic doctrine, it is not surprising that, with one 
eseeption, the Democratic members voted in a solid body against Mr. 
Harris' expulsion, nor that, when he was sent as a delegate to the Chicago 
Convention, he was received there as a member of the party, in full com- 
munion and good standing. 

At Chicago, indeed, Mr. Harris found himself among congenial spirits. 
There the Eev. C. Chauncey Burr, of New Jersey, publicly declared, 

" You cannot liave the face to ask the South to come back into the Union until 
you withdraw your marauding army. Is there a man in this audience that 
wauts to have one half of the States conquered and subjected ? [No.] When 
this is done you have ended the Government. After three years of war, who 
are conquered, j^ou or the South ? I say you arc conquered. You cannot con- 
quer the South, and I pray God you never may." 

James S. Rollins, of Missouri : 

" I love our Southern friends ; they are a noble, a brave, and a chivalrous 
people [cheers], although they are trying to br^ak up the Government ; and 
however much we may hate them, we must remember that they are our 
countrymen, and cannot be subdued so long as we insist upon depriving them 
of their rights." 

John J. Van Allen, of New York : 

" War is disunion. War cfluld never produce peace. It was impossible 
to subjuf;ate eight millions of people, and it ought not to be done, if it could 
be done." 

In fact, the Chicago Convention was a peace convention, of which the 
ruling spirit was Vallandigham. He framed the second resolution of the 
platform, which, as we have seen, was regarded at the South as tanta- 
mount to recognition of their independence. In his Chicago letter of Oc- 
tober 22, 186-4, he boasted that, in the Committee on Platform, it received 
fifteen votes out of eighteen ; and in his speech at Sydney, Ohio, he stated 
that an amendment, suggesting the alternative of war, in case of the fail- 
ure of " peaceable means," was unanimously rejected. So well was he 
satisfied with the result, that, while yet fresh from Chicago, in his Dayton 
speech, of September 6, he exultiugly exclaimed : 

" That convention has met every expectation of mine. The promises have 
all been realized. The convention was emphatically not only a peaceable but 
a peace convention. It was a peace convention ; and, speaking in the name of 
more than twenty millions of freemen, it demanded peace after the failure of 
the ex[>eriment of war. No man among the earnest advocates of peace, from 
the beginning of the war till this hour, has in any formal public declaration 
demanded more than that convention has declared. It meant peace, and it 
said so. It meant, and it means now, that there shall be no more civil war in 
this land." 

Mr. Vallandigham was justified in this assertion, not only by the plat- 



19 

form, but by the temper of the Convention, as shown by the speeches of 
its members and hangers on. Thus Mr. G. C Sanderson exclaimed, 

"Is it not time that this infernal war should stop? [Cries of yes.] Has 
tliere not been blood enough shed? Has there not been property enough des- 
troyed? Have we not all been bound, hand and foot, to the abolition car that 
is rolling over our necks like another Juggernaut. . . . We must have peace. 
Peace is our motive ; nothing but peace. If the S>)uthern Confederacy, by 
any possibility, be subjugated by the abolition administration, the next thing 
they would turn their bayonets on the freemen of the North, and trample you 
in the dust." 

And the Hon. James H. Reed, of Indiana : 

" The will of the people is declared for peace, and in this declaration there is 
nothing tending to folly, inasmuch as in the coming election they intend to 
oust the incumbents of office, and to inaugurate a rule which will bring peace 
and prosperity once more to this land." 

So the Rev. J. A. McMaster, of New York : 

" Let us demand a cessation of the sacrifice until the people shall pronounce 
their great and emphatic verdict for peace, and let the tyrant understand the 
demand comes from earnest men and must be respected. We are often called 
the 'Unterrified.' I trust you are. I hope that your nerves may be of steel, 
for there is a day of trial coming and you must meet it." 

It is hardly worth while to multiply examples of this seditious peace 
spirit in the convention, and we will content ourselves with a few indica- 
tions of the mode in which the party elsewhere endorsed it. 

Thus at the McCIellan Ratification Meeting, held in New York, August 
30, 1864, every speaker declared in favor of peace, denounced the draft, 
and congratulated the party that it had finally and definitely accepted the 
peace policy. Mr. James Brooks exclaimed, " No more fighting ; fighting 
will never restore the Union; fighting and cuffing make no friends." 
Judge Daly "thought there was a possibility of a peace and a preservation 
of the Union through a compromise." Mr. Nelson Smith told the crowd 
of admiring Democrats : 

" The question now is, whether after four years of war this Union can be 
saved without any further prosecution of the war. . . . After four years of 
war, we must now resort to some other means than war, by which our troubles 
can be settled and peace restored — that peace is received as the duty of the in- 
coming administration, a cessation of hostilities, and a convention of the two 
PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY, to 866 if they cannot settle this matter." 

Mr. Conrad Swackhammer assured his applauding auditors that, 

" George B. McCIellan will be the next president, and within twenty-four 
hours after that election peace will be declared. We are tired and sick of 
calls for 500,000 more men by those wlio have no thought but for slavery. I 
hope in November you will all go forth, not with a musket to take your brother's 
life, but to cast a little white ballot for McCIellan and Pendleton, and thus this 
war will be stopped. This war will be ended by diplomacy." 



20 

Mr. Kobert C. Hutchins declared that, 

" The people demand some other means of restoring the Union than that of 
war, and believe that a restoration can be readied by peacealjle means, and 
not by massacre. War and only war can never restore the Union ; an armis- 
tice may, but a million of men cannot ; it has been proved that an armed force 
cannot." 

Mr. William G. Gover said : 

'* I am in favor of an armistice, and believe that we can settle our difficulties 
better by diplomacy than we can by the bayonet and the sword." 

Mr. John L. Overfield exhorted his hearers : 

" Now, gentlemen, you've but to look this matter in the face and say whether 
you will pay these high prices, and be drafted and torn from the bosoms of 
your fiimilies. [Cries, No, no.] Will you be torn from these, or will yon stay 
at home and train your children up ; that, gentlemen, is to be decided next 
November." 

And the great peace organ, the New York Ncivs^ rejoiced over the 
authoritative exposition of its fiivorite principles, as follows : 

"We accept the platform of the Conventicm as a great triumph of the peace 
party. The proposition for an armistice and a convention of all the States, as 
suggested several months ago by The News, has received the sanction of the 
Democracy through their delegates, and the peace men may rest assured that 
that proposition, carried into effect, will bring about an enduring peace be- 
tween the sections. The nominee of the Chicago Convention for the presidency 
is not the candidate of our preference, but, standing upon the platform upon 
which he has been nominated, and . . . being assured that with the election 
of General McClellan the war will enrl, we will support the nominations made 
at Chicago, from this hour until the close of the polls in November. 

" The nominee for the Vice Presidency is the man of all men, whom, had 
the choice been ours, we would have selected. In the nomination of George 
II. Pendleton, a tribute has been worthily offered to the peace sentiment, of 
which he has been a consistent champion." 

It is true that General McClellan made a feeble attempt to justify the 
War Democrats in their support of him by some generalities in his letter 
of acceptance, but he was speedily given to understand that, as James 
Buchanan said, he was a platform and not a man. Thus Fernando Wood 
in a meeting held September 17, in New York, assured his hearers : 

"Besides, if elected, I am satisfied he will entertain the views, and execute 
the principles of tlie great party he will represent, without regard to those he 
may himself possess. He will thus be our a.gent, the creature of our voice, and 
as such cannot if he would, and would not if he could, do otherwise than execute 
the public voice of the country." 

So at the great Ratification Meeting held in Philadelphia on the same 
day, Mr. George M. Wharton laid down the received rule of party dis- 
cipline : — 

" The platform of the Chicago Convention stands before the American people 



21 

as the political creed of the Democratic Party in the existing crisis of the country. 
It must necessarily be the rule of practice of every one who accepts a nomina- 
tion under it." 

Mr. Vallandigliam himself, the great apostle of a submission peace, in 
his Dayton speech of September 7, said of McClellan : 

"I accept him as presented by, and support him to carry out — as I know he 
will carry tmt — the doctrines and principles enunciated in that Convention, 
whicli are nuw the demand of the people of the Lnited States." 

And the Indianapolis Sentinel proclaimed for its party candidate, 

"His programme Avill be a cessation of hostilities and an attempt to restore 
the Union by compromise and reconciliation ; or, failing in that, taking the last 
extreme — recogniiion." 

DENUNCIATION OF THE WAR. 

The Democracy from the first having denounced the war as unconstitu- 
tional, unlawful, and hopeless, were not likely to soften their opposition 
to it as it progressed. If its fortunes were adverse, it afforded an oppor- 
tunity of unlimited abuse of the Administration ; if our arms were success- 
ful, it threatened to destroy their hopes of a pro-slavery reconstruction, 
and their bitterness was intensified; while the sacrifices entailed by the 
struggle formed an inexhaustible theme for appealing to the worst passiona 
of the people. 

At a great meeting of the party, held in Philadelphia, September 17, 

1863, to commemorate the adoption of the Constitution, Mr. Joel Cook 
declared, and his remarks, according to the party organ, were received with 
great enthusiasm : 

" I do not wish in these days to see the flow of blood, or hear the din of 
battle ; to have my property seized for taxes or mortgaged to secure an immense 
national debt, or to know tliat my friei ds or neighbors, or perhaps myself, can 

be dragged oiF by conscription laws to tight against their brethren I 

cannot regard a great victory over my brethren as anything but food for melan- 
choly reflection." 

In the same mood, Mayor Gunther, the representative of New York, the 
great headquarters of the Democracy, in his message of September 29, 

1864, vetoing the resolutions to illuminate in honor of Sheridan's victories 
in the Valley : 

" I yield to no man in my attachment to the Union as it was and the Con- 
stitution as it is, but as the President demands of the Southern jjeujde to abandon 
the riglits which the Constitution confers, I do not see how those, who have 
always held that the Federal Government has nothing to do with the domestic 
institutions of the States, can be expected to rejoice over victories which, what- 
ever they may be, surely are not Union victories." 

So, at the Syracuse Convention, held August 18, 1864, preliminary to 



22 

tliat at Chicago, among the resolutions adopted denouncing the Adminis- 
tration, we find the following : 

" It has, and is still waj^ing a bloody and relentless war for the avowed pur- 
pose of extenninatino- eight millions of freemen from the homes of their fathers, 
and blotting out from the American constellation one-half of the States of the 
Union. It has sought to arouse and enlist the most wicked and malignant 
passions, reckless of all ends if it but subvert the existing Government and 
immolate American citizens." 

The Ashland, Ohio, Union, a paper warmly supported by the Democratic 
organization of its region, could scarcely find words too bitter to describe 
our armies : , 

" Hired Hessians going to the sunny Southern soil to butcher by wholesale 
not foreigners, but good men, as exemplary Christians as any of our own men. 
. . . This is a damned abolition war. "We believe Abe Lincoln is as much of 
a traitor as Jcfi'. Davis." 

In a speech before the Lansing (Michigan) Democratic Association, in 
March, 18G3, Mr. George W. Peck declared, 

" You black Republicans began this war. You have carried it on for two 
years. You have sent your heil hounds down Suutli to devastate the country, 
and what have jou done? Y^ou have not conquered the South ; you never can 
conquer it. And why? Because they are our brethren." 

A tract, extensively circulated by the Democratic Committee of Penn- 
sylvania, in the canvass of 18G4, thus addressed the citizens of the State : 

"Farmers, — men of the r%u-al regions! This abolition business has mort- 
gaged yuur farms forever to the ricli men of this country and Europe for every 
penny the lauds are worth ; and you will have to pay the interest of this mort- 
gage annually, in the form of heavy and ever increasing taxes. This, in addi- 
tion to the chance of being yourselves or of having your sons or relatives dragged 
away by the Draft, to meet danger or perhaps death on the battlefield! All, 
to set loose upon the country a parcel of brutal Africans, who, for all they can 
ever hope, here or hereafter, are better off in their present homes than any- 
where else in the world, or than they would be in Africa itself." 

At the Chicago Convention, of course, this feeling found full and free 
expression. The Rev. C. Chauncey Burr exclaimed, 

" We had no right to burn their wheat fields, steal their pianos, spoons or 
jewelry. Mr. Lincoln had stolen a good many thousand negroes, but for every 
negro he had thus stolen, he had stolen ten thousand spoons. It had been 
said that if the South would lay down their arms they would be received back 
into the Union. The South could not honorably lay down her arms, for she 
was ti'diting for her honor. Two millions of men had been sent down to the 
slaughter pens of the South, and the army of Lincoln could not again be filled, 
neither by enlistments nor conscription. If he ever uttered a prayer, it was 
that no one of the States of the Union should be conquered and subjugated." 

And Mr. Henry Clay Dean : 

" For over three years Lincoln had been calling for men, and they had been 



23 

given. But with all the vast armies placed at his command he had failed ! 
failed!! failed!!! FAILED!!!! SiK-h a failure had never been known. 
Such destruction of human life had never been known since tlie destruction of 
Sennacherib by the breath of the Almighty. And still the monster usurper 
wanted more men for his slaughter pens. . . . Ever since the usurper, traitor 
and tyrant had occupied the presidential chair, the Republican Party had 
shouted war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt. Blood had flowed in Utr- 
rents, and yet the thirst of the old monster was not quenched. His cry was 
for more blood." 

Entertaining these views with respect to the war, of course the eiforts 

of the party were directed to render it unpopular, and to oppose every 

measure necessary for its continuance and success. The Hon. D. W. 

Voorhies, of Indiana, understood this when in an address to his constituents 

in April, l-JGl, he promised them : 

" I say to you, my constituents, that as your representative, I will never 
vote one dollar, one man. or one gun to the Administration of Abraham Lincoln 
to make war upon the South." 

In this, Mr. Voorhees merely gave expression to the received policy of 
his party as constantly recorded in the proceedings of Congress. It would 
require too much space to trace the opposition more or less disguised with 
which every financial and military measure was obstructed by Democratic 
members, and it will be sufficient to mention a test vote taken in the 
House of Representatives, December 17, 1863, on the following resolu- 
tion of the Hon. G-reen Clay Smith, of Kentucky : 

" That we hold it to be the duty of Congress to pasa all necessary bills to 
supply men and money, and the duty of the people to render every aid in their 
power to the constituted authorities of the Government in the crushing out of 
the rebellion, and in bringing the leaders thereof to condign punishment." 

On this simple proposition, in a full House, the vote on the Democratic 
side was three yeas to sixty-five nays. And the pledge thus given for the 
party has been faithfully carried out in every detail. 

OPPOSITION TO VOLUNTEERING. 

Thus, when the country depended upon volunteers to keep the ranks of 
the Union armies full, Democrats in their zeal constantly exposed them- 
selves to the penalties of the law by discouraging and dissuading men from 
enlisting. Their arguments are well put by the Grand Rapids (Michigan) 
Enquirer, in 1861. 

"The Democrats and the South have no quarrel ; why then should we be 
called upon to assault and murder our friends and desolate their lands? It 
seems unreasonable that sensible men should ask such a thing. If we remain 
passive in this contest, these Abolitionists ought to be satisfied. Again we say, 
Democrats ponder well before you enlist." 

Even the smallest incidents were taken advantage of to keep Democrats 



24 

from volunteering, both from opposition to the war and a desire to keep up 
the party strength at home. Thus the PhiLi'clphia A(/e, of November 2, 
1863, on learning that the defeat of Vallandigham in Ohio had caused 
rejoicing in Rosecrans' army, says : 

" Every Democrat, therefore, who vohmteers and happens to get into the 
Department of the Cumberland, must expect to join in ' three times three' 
whenever his party is defeated. ... We know that in this State we outnum- 
ber and outmatch them ; but, although they may be unable to cut all of our 
throats, why, we can commit suicide. Let us hasten to do it." 

If these were the orthordox Democratic views on the subject of volun- 
teering, it is easy to imagine how bitter were their 

DENUNCIATIONS OF THE DRAFT. 

It might have been thought that the New York Democratic draft riots, in 
July, 1863, in which Governor Seymour addressed the mob as his "noble 
hearted friends," would have proved a terrible warning of the results of 
thus working on the passions of the multitude. It would appear, however, 
as though their only influence was to excite regret at their prompt sup- 
pression, for they were immediately followed by a systematic process of 
again stimulating opposition to the point of resistance. Scarcely was the 
month out, when the "New York States' Eights Association" published 
a "Declaration" in which it took the ground that, 

" Whenever the sovereignity of the State is invaded, and the rights essential 
to its existence are usurped, it is the duty of the Governor to take official, 
prompt, and pu])lic notice of the wrong and danger, and l.irthwith prepare to 
maintain its sovereignity, if needs be, with all the power of 'the State. . . . 
The act commonly called the Conscript Act does invade the suvereignity and 
jurisdiction of this State, and usurp rights essential to its existence. We de- 
nounce it as contrary to the fundamental rights and liberties of the land, un- 
equal in the distinction it makes between the rich and the poor ; oppressive in 
its compulsory provisions, whereby the freemen of this State are illegally com- 
pelled to go out of the State to fight, being a forced military service never 
before demanded or claimed by the Federal Government. We denounce the 
whole Act in its general intent and purport, and its special provisions, as 
despotic, harsh, unjust and illegal. We therefore call upon the Governor 
to ' maintain and defend the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the State,' and 
to protect the people in their rights and liberties from this most odious and 
intolerable oppression." 

Governor Seymour was quite ready to go as far as he dared in response 
to this appeal. In his letter of August 9, 1863, to Mr. Lincoln, he says : 

" It is believed by at least one-half of the people of the loyal States that the 
Conscription Act, which they are called upon to obey because it is on the 
Statute Book, is in itself a violation of the supreme constitutional law. There 
is a fear and suspicion that while they are threatened with the severest penal- 
ties of the law they are to be deprived of its protection. ... I do not dwell 
upon what I believe would be the consequence of a violent, harsh policy before 



25 

the constitutionality of the Act is tested. You can scan the immediate future 
as well as I. The temper of the people to-day you can readily learu." 

The significance of these scarcely veiled threats is apparent from a call 
made to the citizens of the Nineteenth Ward, New York, to raise a regi- 
ment of National Guards 

" To be placed at the disposal of the Governor at the earliest possible moment, 
either to repel a foreign foe, o<- to maintain the rights of the Empire State ; an 
invasion or usurpation would be equally obnoxious ; therefore, as we value 
liberty, soviet us be vigilant." 

This dangerous temper of the people was carefully fostered by the Demo- 
cratic press. Even the organ of the professed War Democrats, the New 
York Leader^ lent its aid to sedition. In speaking of the examination of 
claimants for exemption, it exclaimed, August 15, 1863, 

"The story of Wat Tyler taught our British ancestors the danger of com- 
bining in'lecency with tyranny. Have our rulers forgotten the lesson, or does 
our dcgeueracy justify the contempt with which they treat it?" 

Mr. William B. Reed, of course, was not behind hand in the endeavor 
to render the law odious. In his Meadville speech, September 17, 1863, 
he remarked : 

" No\v what shall I say of the other Federal centralizing device, by which 
uniforms are forced on the backs of those who do not wish to fight, and a heavy 
tax is laid, not according to any principle of law or Constitution, but by lot. 
This, it will be admitted, is a very imperial sort of decree, by which Mr. Lincoln 
declares every able bodied citizen of Pennsylvania, from eighteen to forty-five, 
a soldier in his army, — to be handcuffed, if need be, — to be put in any regiment 
he chooses, and to be relieved from service only by paying into his treasury a 
tax of three hundred dollars." 

No time was lost in getting a decision adverse to the Act, and on Novem- 
ber 10, the Democratic Judges of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 
Lowrie, Woodward, and Thompson, pronounced it unconstitutional. The 
use made of this judgment was promptly shown by the Philadelphia Age 
of November 12, which said of the Enrollment Act : " It ceases to be a 
law, and it becomes the duty of every good citizen to resist its enforce- 
ment." At that time, the draft was indicated for January 5, 1864, and 
lest the people under its pressure should endeavor to avert it by volun- 
teering, the Age proceeded to argue that no danger of a collision with the 
authorities was, however, to be feared, for 

" Were there no better reason, it would be sufficient for the Washington 
authorities to know that those who should attempt to arrest men in this State, 
by virtue of the Conscription Act, would be mere trespassers, and to resist 
them tooukl be every one's right and duty. It is not possible that such col- 
lisions will be provoked, and we conclude, therefore, that for the present tlie 
people oj' Pennsylvania are relieved from the terrors of the conscription." 



26 

And Congress was scarcely organized before Mr. Philip Johnson, a 
Democratic representative from Pennsylvania, introduced a resolution re- 
quiring the President either to acquiesce in the decision of the State tri- 
bunal, or to submit the question to the U. S, Supreme Court, then under 
Chief Justice Taney. For this obstructive measure the Democratic mem- 
bers, with the exception of four, voted in a solid body. What is known 
as the Columbia County Conspiracy, an armed and organized resistance to 
the law, w^ the natural result of these teachings. 

The privilege of commutation had been the chief point of attack by the 
Democrats, but its removal only intensified their bitterness. At the 
Chicago Convention the draft was the subject of the most inflammatory 
appeals to the people. Thus, the Hon. James H. Reed, of Indiana, said : 

" He advised open and above-board resistance to the draft. If Lincoln and 
his satraps attempted to enforce it, blood would flow in our streets, and it would 
be right it shuuld flow. Lincoln was already damned to all eternity, and he 
did not know if even this iniquitous measure would materially affect the es- 
timation in which the people held him. ... He advised his hearers to shoot 
down those who would enforce the draft; to insist upon the right of the writ of 
habeas corpus ; to resist to the bitter end tlie attempt to make tlie military 
power superior to the civil, and to openly arm themselves that they might be 
prepared for horrible contingencies," 

Mr. Paine, of Missouri, asked his hearers, 

" Did the people want a draft ? [Not by a d — d sight.] Then they must 
upset the present government at Washington. This dynasty had already placed 
in the field 2,200,000 men to l)e oflerred upon the altar of the negro, and now 
it demanded 500,000 more. If these are given there will be no tinality, but 
only a prelude to fresh calls, all to elevate the flat-nosed, wooly-headed, long- 
heeleJ, cursed of God, and damned of man, descendants of Africa." 

The Hon. H. S. Orton, of Wisconsin, however, admitted that he liked 
the draft, on account of the political advantage it gave the Democracy. 

" Under the pressure of the draft — and God bless the draft — it is the best 
argument tliat has ever been addressed to the American people. It proves that 
we have touciied bottom, we have got a realizing sense that we have got nearly 
to the last ditch, the last man und the last dollar." 

The Rev. C Chauncey Burr gloated over the resistance that had aiready 
been made, and threatened a revolution. 

" In New Jersey they had shifted the responsibility of these despotic acts to 
the shoulders of the Abolidoniscs, and more than one provost marshal had a 
hole made through his head. In tliat State it was a difficult matter at one time 
to find an Abolitionist who would accept such a position, and the Administra- 
tion had tried to bribe Democrats, but, thank God, they had failed. But they 
had well nigh reached the end of their rei;in of despotism. They could and 
should not go any further. They were about to be swept irom the land by an 
indignant people. They talked about a rebellion down South, but a greater 
rebellion had been in progress in the North." 



27 

DEMOCRATIC ASSAULTS ON THE FINANCES. 

If the Democrats thus did all they could to prevent the government 
from getting men, they were not less eager to cut off its supplies of money, 
hy attacking its credit, and keeping the prospects of repudiation before the 
people. 

Governor Seymour, while canvassing the State of New York before his 
election in 1862, thus artfully deprecated and threatened repudiation : 

" The weight of annual taxation will severely test the loyalty of the people. 
Repudiation of our financial obligations would caupe disaster and endless 
moral evils. But pecuniary rights will never be held more sacred than 
personal rights; Repudiation of the Constitution involved repudiation of 
national debts." 

Mr. William B. Reed, shortly afterwards, in his '< Vindication " was 

more out-spoken. 

" Will anv man, the veriest optimist who lives, tell me that in his conscience 
he looks to 'the payment — even to the extent of its appalling interest — of the 
war debt we are now rolling up so fast — its thousands or hundreds of millions, 
funded or unfunded, — without counting the millions by and by, for claims and 
damages and pensions, or the contingent cost of negro deportation and coloni- 
zation ? It is a grave subject, this, of public credit, on wdiich no one should 
talk lightly. Its abuse and its disparagement are alike, though not equally, 
mischievous. But the fear and the belief of every thoughtful man must at 
this moment be that, unless some limit to new debt be soon imposed, when pay- 
day comes there will be a race among the States of the North as to further 
disintegration, and an effort in this way to escape from the overpowering bur- 
then of desperate indebtedness." 

The same gentleman, a year later, in his Meadville speech of September 
17, 1863, thus attacked the whole financial system and credit of the gov- 
ernment : 

" First, as to the Federal paper currency. It is a huge engine of ultimate 
misery. It is pestilent because it is insidious, and pervades every channel of 
active life, and influences every relation of business. It is pestilent as a con- 
fession of weakness, for no government that felt itself strong, and was not on 
the defensive, ever made such an experiment. . . . We do it with all our 
boasted prosperity, because, in point of truth, the sources of real and substan- 
tial credit are cut off by our own insanity ; because no one abroad will lend us 
money, and no one at home will, if they can help it, lend us money. . . . The 
only persons who need not take this trash, or who are forbidden to take it, are 
the government itself; for remember, one large element of the enormous price 
you now pay for tea, and coffee, and sugar, and such necessaries of life, is the 
heavy duty in gold and silver which the government exacts. But, except the 
duty thus paid, and the little interest they promise to pay on the public debt, 
there is nothing about us or around us but a vast ocean of unconvertible and 
irredeemable paper, increasing every moment that the bleeding artery of war 
expenditure continues to flow." 

In August, 1864, Mr. Vallandigham, at the Syracuse Convention, in- 
dulged in the most fearful amplification and prophecies of evil. 

" A debt of nearly four thousand millions, a daily expenditure of nearly five 



28 

millions, and a currency worth about thirty-eif:;ht cents on the dollar, which 
two months ago was worth one liundred per cent, more than it is now, and 
which two months hence will he worth one hundred per cent. less. Ruin is 
impending." 

Nor have these persistent .assaults upon the credit of tlie government 
ceased with the triumphant •close of the war. That has vindicated itself, 
but the public debt is a thing as well of the present and the future, and 
the Pemoeracy, who grudge the object for which it was created, still con- 
tinue their attacks upon it. On May 24, 1865, the Democratic Judges of 
the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania pronounced the Legal Tender Act 
unconstitutional, and Mr. Edward Ingersoll, in his New York speech of 
April 13, 1865, attacked the very corner-stone of public faith and national 
credit, and boldly justified repudiation. 

" I shall deal with this question politically, and inquire, for a moment, 
whether the laboring and producing classes of America are, by our laws, or 
by our system of government, or by any code of law or honor, human or divine, 
bound to assume this burden? .... If, on the contrary, it is revolutionary, 
and has been created in violation and in overthrow of our institutions, our duty 
as conservative and honest citizens is to resist it and support these institutions. 
.... In short, sir, to put the argument in a word, this is the debt of Aboli- 
tionism. If Abolitionism has been false to American institutions, .... then 
are the laboring and producing classes of America under no obligation to its 
support." 

This is not merely a sporadic manifestation of individual seditious dis- 
honesty, but an indication of a determinate party policy, which shows itself 
elsewhere with more or less distinctness. The New York World occasion- 
ally experiments upon the patience of its readers with insidious comparisons 
between the Confederate and the Federal debt. The Cincinnati Inquirer^ 
the organ of the party in the Central West, is more outspoken. In its 
issue of June 6, 1865, it says : 

'' Sincerely, we are afraid that the national debt will not be paid We 

must certainly not repudiate, though we may fail to pay. To repudiate, would 
be to declare that we do not owe, which would be very wrong; to fail to pay 
might be entirely right, as it could be put upon the ground of overpowering 
necesMty. There is always an implied condition in the creation of debts, public 
as well as private, that the party promising shall, at the time it falls due, have 
the means to meet his obligation. If members of Congress find themselves un- 
able, in conscience, to vote taxes upon their constituents, or instalments when 
there is no money in the Treasury, who is to blame ? If the people resolve to 
vote for a representative whose sincere convictions are against taxes, rather 
than for one whose convictions are the other way, who is to blame them? .... 
When the people decline to vote for members of Congress who are known to be 
in favor of continued or increased taxation, and conclude to vote for members 
who are known or believed to be opposed to such continuation or increase, we 
shall be disposed to hold that they understand their own business and ability 
best, and shall not, therefore, be impelled to pronounce against their honesty 
or tiieir patriotism. So far, we think, we can promise." 

And this barefaced repudiator returns to the attack, June 10, with an 



29 

article, in which he lets us see how he expects to bring about his object, 
by familiarizing the people with the idea of repudiation, 

"As the good Mr. Sleok said of the Potowatomies, we Bay of the public 

"creditors, we hope they will get their money We have always observed, 

that when some men begin to speak of not paying their debts, provideil things 
are thus and thus, it is not long before they learn to drop the contingency and 
go in for non-payment altogether." 

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 

was not intended to soothe the exacerbations of pro-slavery Democracy, 
and no surprise, therefore, can be felt at its calling forth denunciations jn 
every degree of bitterness. Two examples will suffice to show the temper 
in which it was received. Thus the A(je of Nov. 13, 1863, indulges in 
playful pleasantry. 

" The original draft of the Emancipation Proclamation is for sale out "West; 
and one bid has been offered of twelve hundred dollars for it. Some Loyal 
Leaguer 'hopes it may be secured for a loyal Historical Society.' Dick Tur- 
pin's commission to rob on the highway, which this eccentric rascal ha<l drawn 
up and forged the seal and signature to, recently sold in London for £240, just 
exactly the price offered for the Emancipation Proclamation." 

The Philadelphia Evening Journal of Jan. 20, 1863, was, however, not 
disposed to regard the subject in so jocular a light. It quoted the follow- 
ing from Jefferson Davis' recent message concerning the Proclamation, 
and endorsed the remarks as being " truthfully spoken :" 

" It is also in effect an intimation to the North that they must jjrepare to sub- 
mit to a separation Humanity shudders at the appalling atrocities which 

are being dai4y multiplied under the sanction of those who have claimed tem- 
porary possession of the power in the United States, and who are fast making 
its once fair name a reproach among civilized men." 

And the Journal proceeded to comment and enlarge upon this text. 

"None of the great benefits predicted from the Emancipation Proclamation 
have been realized. The slaves have not risen and cut their master's throats, 

as the Abolitionists so fondly hoped Well, the slaves have not risen, 

but it has been through the Providence of God, and not from the desire of Mr. 
Lincoln to the contrary. He issued his incendiary address to them, inviting 
them to strike for freedom, but they have remained faithfully with their mas- 
ters, except where they have been driven away at the point of the bayonet by 

Federal troops The President has just as much right to declare the 

marriage tie dissolved in the South as the bond of master and servant. One is 
as much a military necessity as the other. Who but a madman or a fool 
believes that the Union can be restored by such means." 

THE AMNESTY PROCLAMATION 

found as little favor in the eyes of the Democracy. Its terms were so 
liberal, and it manifested so earnest a desire to restore the Union, that the 
Democratic organs at once set to work to persuade the South that they 



30 

could not, in honor, avail themselves of it. Thus, the Age of Dec. 11, 
1863, argues : 

" For Mr. Lincoln, therefore, to compel the people of the South to swear that 
they will ' abide by and faithfully support all proclamations having reference 
to slaves,' is not less arbitrary and unreasonable than to force them to give in 
their allegiance to his creed about spirit-rapping, and, if complied with, would 
strip those who yielded of even the semblance of self-government." 

The New York Leader of Dec. 12, was even more vehement. 

" The grotesque absurdity of this plan is at once apparent. Why, to say 
nothing of those in rebellion against the Union, we can most confidently assert 
that at lest three-fifths of the people of the so-called loyal States would refuse 
to take any such oath under any circumstances whatever. The recent illness 

of Mr. Lincoln must have affected his brnin As Democrats, we care 

nothing for this Proclamation. It can have no official force until it is issued, 
and then it will fall as flat as dish water. It is inconsistent, conti-adictory, 
unconstitutional and nullifies itself." 

The Greensburg (Pa.) Argus was especially solicitous for the honor of 

its Southern friends. According to it, the Proclamation 

"Proposes to absolve treason by an oaih involving not only a violation of 
THE CONSTITUTION, but also the surrender of all possibility of manhood, by 
swearing to sustain measures of the Executive not yet proclaimed. In a word, 
under the specious pretence of proposing a plan for the restoration of the Union, 
it adopts a plan which is sure to defeat it." 

The New Haven Daily Register of Dec. 11, it is true, took a different 
view of the matter, which shows the extent to which kist of power and 
place can go. It advised its Southern allies to submit to the degradation, 
and promised ihem the assistance of its party in breaking their oaths of 
amnesty. 

" We hope the people of the South will accept this offer, and thus put an 
end to this bloody strife. With their representatives again in Congress, it will 
not take long to wipe out the revolutionary measures of the Abolitionists and 
place the Union again on the basis of the Constitution. By this means, too, 
they can help the conservative Union vien of the North to recover 'power in the 
Government." 

DENUNCIATIONS OF THE GOVERNMENT. 

It will be difficult for tjie nest generation to credit the wrathful bitter- 
ness with which the Administration was daily assailed throughout the 
length and breadth of the land — a bitterness contrasting strangely with 
the reticent sympathy manifested towards the rebels. In the Chicago 
platform, for instance, there is no word of reprobation for those who for 
four years had been seeking to destroy the nation, while one-half of the 
resolutions were devoted to an arraignment of the Administration. 

"Resolved, That the direct interference of the military authority of the 
United States in the recent elections held in Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri 



31 

and Delaware, was a shameful violation of the Constitution, and the repetition 
of such acts in the approaching election will be held as revolutionary, and re- 
sisted with all the means and power under our control. 

^'■Resolved, That the aim and object of the Democratic party is to preserve 
the Federal Union and the rights of the States unimpaired; and they hereby 
declare that they consider the Administrative usurpation of extraordinary and 
dangerous poAvers not granted by the Constitution, the subversion of the civil 
by military law in States not in insurrection, the arbitrary militiiry arrest, im- 
prisonment, trial and sentence of American citizens in States where civil law 
exists in full force, the suppression of freedom of speech and of the press, the 
denial of the right of asylum, the open and avowed disregard of State rights, 
the employment of unusual test-oaths, and the interference with and denial of 
the right of the people to bear arms, as calculated to prevent a restoration of 
the Union and the perpetuation of a government deriving its just powers from 
the consent of the governed. 

^'Resolved, That the shameful disregard of the Administration to its duty in 
respect to our fellow-citizens who now and long have been prisoners of war in a 
suffering condition, deserves the severest reprobation, on the score alike of 
public interest and common humanity." 

This, however, is moderate in comparison with the fierce abuse lavished 
upon the Government by the orators of the Convention. Thus the Rev. 
C. Chauncey Burr declared, 

"Argument was useless and the time for action had come. He would speak 
with that freedom which had been the wont of the people of America for the 
last three years. During that time, spies and informers had been on the track 
of the people, and, in point of fact, we had lived under a despotism worse than 
that of Austria. The people had submitted to that despotism, not because of a 
want of courage, bravery, or pluck, but because they were a law-and-order 
people. They had patiently waited for a change in the policies of Lincoln's 
administration, but it had been denied them, and for nearly four years they 
had submitted to these acts of despotism. And it was a wonder they had a 
Cabinet and men who carried out the infamous orders of the gorilla tyrant that 
usurped the Presidential chair." 

And Captain Kuntz, of Pennsylvania, asked, 

" Shall more wives be made widows and more children fatherless, and greater 
hate be stirred up between children of the same glorious Constitution ? If not, 
we must put our foot on the tyrant's neck and destroy it. The Democratic 
government must be raised to power, and Lincoln with his Cabinet of rogues, 
thieves and spies be driven to destruction." 

This, in fact, was the tone of the Democratic organs everywhere. Thus, 
at the Syracuse Convention, Aug. 18, 1864, one of the resolutions de- 
clared, 

*' Resolved, That we offer our solemn protest against the usurpation and law- 
less despotism of the present Administration as subversive of the Constitution 
and destructive to the liberties of the people. It has denied to sovereign States 
constitutional rights, and thereby absolved them from all allegiance. It has 
trampled down a nation that it may instal a military despotism upon the ruins 

of constitutional liberty It has struck down fi-eedom of speech and of 

the press. It has stripped from the American citizen his panoply, and con- 
signed him to the bastile without process of law, without charge, and without 
opportunity of trial. It has, by the military, violently suppressed the fi'eedom 



32 

of the ballot, and dictated elections at the point of the bayonet. It has an- 
nulled every constitutional guarantee for the protection of the citizen and sub- 
jected him to an irresponsible tyranny of military violence." 

So the State Central Committee of Pennsylvania, in their address to the 
people during the canvass of 1864, assured us — 

" Nor can hope find a resting-place in contemplating the men who now con- 
trol our Goverment and administer the laws; and it turns sickened and sadly 
away from the audacity, arrogance and tyranny it finds in high places, even in 
the very citadel of the nation. Sciolists in government; atheists in religion ; 
men who are free-lovers in one sphere and free thieves in another; reuegndes 
in politics and scoffers at every well settled principleof public right and })rivate 
virtue now sway the destinies of this Republic, and are crushing out the very 
life of American freedom." 

This cry was echoed everywhere, but a single additional example must 

suffice, taken from the Philadelphia Age of Oct. 1, 186-4. 

"When we review the long and fearful catalogue of wrongs and infamies 
and crimes committed on these suffering people under orders from the great 
criminals at Washington, we cannot believe that any one wearing a human 
form and having a human heart within his breast could sit idly by and not 
give a cheering voice and extend a helping hand to his Democratic brethren of 
the North, who Jiow, in the face of despotic power, are fighting this last great 

battle for human freedom We have wept with them when the standard 

of civil and religious liberty has been trodden in the dust by Mr. Lincoln's 
myrmidons. We have unsparingly denounced the cowardly acts of tiie base 
traitors at Washington who have taken away their dearest rights and liberties." 

DENUNCIATION OF MR. LINCOLN. 

Concentrated upon the President, this abuse became frantic reviling. 
Those who now profess to revere his memory could then find no words 
coarse or bitter enough to express their hatred and contempt of his person 
and motives. The "Great Joker," baboon, ape, gorilla, usurper, tyrant, 
monster, widow-maker, Negro-God, — such were the customary epithets 
applied to the Chief Magistrate of the nation. Enough of this, perhaps, has 
incid.entully been given above, and from among fifty specimens of ribaldry 
which lie before us, we can find space but for the following, which will 
exemplify their general tone. It is from the La Crosso (Wis.) Democrat, 
and was largely and approvingly copied by other Democratic papers. 

"Yesterday was Fast-Day. The widow-maker called for half a million of 
men, and then asked God to bless him for the cruel deed ! And in this con- 
nection we are led to repeat : 

" God bless our noble President! 

" Bless him for being the poorest apology for a Chief Magistrate the world 
ever saw. 

" Bless our noble President for being the only clown, buffoon, and story-teller 
ever elevated to a position of inilueuce in this country. 

"Bless him for filling the land with smutty jokes — with foul-mouthed and 
obscene stories which even blackguards by profession are ashamed to repeat. 

" Bless him for overriding all laws, both human and divine. 



"Bless him for his imbecile incompetency, and for his success in ruining a 
great nation. 

"Bless him for turning the war for a restoration of the Union, and for the 
suppression of the rebellion into a wicked and murderous crusade for cotton, 
niggers and power. 

" Bless him for making a million of widows, and five millions of orphans. 

" Bless him for robbing the North of its bone and sinew, for using the bodies 
of those whose servant he is to enrich the soil of rebel territory. 

"Bless him for piling mountains of taxes upon us — for the stamps we use — 
for the depreciation of our currency— for the poverty, ruin, and sufi"ering in the 
land— for the thousands of women he has forced into houses of prostitution — 
for the thousands of broken hearts — for thousands of orphaned children who 
will curse him forever— for the army of cripples— for the corruption in high 
places— for the trampling upon the liberties of a free people— for freeing the 
negroes by a stroke of his pen — for continuing this war till slaves aro freed, 
thus proving the foolishness of his proclamation — for the failure of his armies — 
for the deprivation of rights which had made America the home for all God's 
oppressed— for the depopulation of the land and the feeling of undefinable dread, 
which might have been golden had he been more of a man and a statesman, and 
less of a pliant tool in the hands of fanatics." 

The promulgation of these sentiments naturally led to threats of ven- 
geance, legal or illegal, such as those made by excited orators at the Chicago 
Convention, where the Hon. W. W. O'Brien, of Illinois, assured his 
hearers that, 

" When Abraham Lincoln retired from the Presidential chair, they would 
renew trial by jury and try him for the offences he has committed against the 
the laws and the Constitution. He would be provided with counsel and pro- 
tected by good Democratic lawyers. (Cheers.) They would try him as Charles 
I, was tried in England, and the verdict of the jury might be the same, that he 
had been found guilty of being a tyrant and a traitor. Whatever they would 
do would be under the law, and if they found him guilty, they would find men 
to carry out the law. (Cheers)." 

And the Hon. Benjamin Allen, of New York, prophesied : 

"The people will soon rise, and if they cannot put Lincoln out of power by 
the ballot, they will by the bullet." 

The crime of ^ooth was the logical result of all this, and its sequence is 
to be found in the New York Neios of June 8, in which the court now try- 
ing the assassins is told : 

" If they order any body to be executed, they will be simply guilty, every 
one of them, of deliberate murder, and when this people wakes a little out of 
their bewilderment, the members of that military commission will be hanged." 

THREATS or RESISTANCE. 

The aid and comfort aiForded to rebellion by the Democracy was not 
confined to argument and denunciation. Efforts were constantly made to 
stir the people up to the pitch of armed resistance, and, but for the sleep- 
less vigilance of the Government, the attempt would have been infallibly 
made through the agency of the secret Democratic orders, the '' Knights 



34 

of the Golden Circle," the " American Knights/' and the " Sons of 
Liberty." 

The leading principles which, more or less concealed, form the basis of 
much that has been quoted above, will be found reduced to their simple 
expression in the following from the " Lesson" of the First Degree of the 
Order of the Sons of Liberty. 

'• 10. Whenever the officials, to whom the people have entrusted the powers 
of the Government, shall refuse to administer it in strict accordance with its 
constitution, and shall assume and exercise power or authority not delegated, 
it is the inherent right and imperative duty of the people to resist such officials, 
and, if need be, to expel them by force of arms. Such resistance is not revolu- 
tion, but is solely the assertion of right. 

" 11. It is incompatible with the history and nature of our system of govern- 
ment, that Federal authority should coerce by arms a sovereign State ; and all 
intimations of such power or right were expressly withheld in the Constitution, 
which conferred upon the Federal Government all its authority." 

And the Grand Commander of the Order in Indiana, (H. H. Dodd, of 
Indianapolis, who confessed his guilt by violating his parole and escaping 
to Canada while under trial), in his address to the Order of that State, 
February IG, 1864, thus communicates the views of Vallandigham on the 
subject : 

'* He finally judges that the Washington power will not yield up its power, 
until it is taken from them by an indignant people by force of arms. He inti- 
mates that parties, men and interests, will divide into two classes, and that a 
conflict will ensue for the mastery." 

The same ideas, more decently veiled, arc conveyed in the third and 
fourth resolutions of the Chicago Platform, under guise of fear lest the 
coming elections should be controlled by the military power of the Ad- 
ministration, and of indignation at the disarming of the Sons of Liberty in 
Indiana. 

In view of the programme thus indicated, it is easy to understand the 
threats in which Democratic demagogues habitually indulged. 

Thus Mr. Max Groepp, in a speech at Lancaster, Pa., September 17, 
1863, told his hearers : 

" So long as the free exercise of the elective franchise is left us, I still hope. 
Should that be taken away, we have nothing left to live for, and may as well 
sell our lives as dearly as we can." 

So Mr. Senator Wall, of New Jersey, May 9, 1863, enlightened the 
Democratic Central Club of Philadelphia, on their rights and duties : 

" I do not hesitate to declare in the ears of the Administration and of the 
Loyal Leagues its allies, that if their war upon the personal liberty of the 
subject, in defiance of the guarantees of the Constitution, goes on, the time 
may come when ' forbearance ceases to be a virtue,' and ' resistance to tyrants 



35 

becomes obedience to God.' Let our cry be, in the fearful contest which is 
upproachiug, ' We will ask for nothing but what is right ; we will submit to 
nothing that is wrong.' " 

And Mr. Edward Ingersoll endeavored to excite the passions of the same 

body, June 13, 1863 : 

"Can the Democratic people of America protect and defend the institutions 
of this country against the revolutionary assaults of Abolitionism? Aye, 
sirs, and whether the appeal be to the ballot-bos, or the hideous but not less 
popular appeal to the cartridge box be forced upon the people, I have not a 

particle of doubt of the result Maintain your laws, peaceably if you 

can, forcibly if you must. Your Constitution provides that, ' the right of the 
people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.' That clause has full mean- 
ing, and was not provided for you without ansious thought for the future, founded 
on a knowledge of the past !" 

Nor was there wanting a Tyrtasus to sing the wrongs and threaten the 

vengeance of the martyrs who were cruelly restrained from destroying their 

country. To relieve the monotony of prosaic treason, a few lines may 

be quoted, from "The Bastiles of America," "written for the Age," 

and printed therein, September 23, 1863. 

"A thousand memories of wrong, which freemen ne'er forget, 
Are brooded o'er in Warren, and the vaults of Lafayette, 
The shield of law our fathers gave, their children's sole defence, 
You've wrested on the ' lafety' plea, the tyrant's old pi-etence ; 
And now, with daggers at our breasts, you bid us hug our chains, 
And bear in silence all the stripes, dealt by a host of Cains. 
JNo ! by the bright heroic past, its deeds of high renown. 
That thundered at the gates of kings, and shook their sceptres down, 
By shades of Franklin, Jefferson, of Henry, Adams, Lee, 
And sires that fought with Washington the battles of the free. 
We will not be your willing slaves, while one warm drop remains, 
Unchilled by tyrant's menaces in dauntless freemen's veins !" 

This sort of malignant folly was kept up until the eve of Mr. Lincoln's 
re-election. The National Democratic Executive Committee, on October 
10, 1864, issued an address in which they endeavored to inflame the pas- 
sions of the people by recounting the tyrannical excesses of the G-overn- 
ment, and wound up by threatening a revolution in case of McClcllan's 
defeat at the polls. 

" They believe that the American people, armed with the majestic authority 
of the Constitution and the laws, will meet these beginnings of usurpation in 
the spirit and with the determination of their fathers ; nor suffer Executive am- 
bition so far to corrupt the constitutional remedies of Executive wrong-doing as 
to condemn this great and free people in the immediate future to the condition of 
the remedies of the subject populations of the olden world." 

On the same day, the special organ of the Peace Democracy, the New 
York News, carried out the proposition to its legitimate results, by de- 
claring that McClellan's election was hopeless, and that the time for action 
was at hand. 



36 

" The sun is not more certain to rise to-morrow, than that the President of 
these United States for the next four jears ■will be Abraham Lincoln ! . . . . 
The last refuge and hope of law, order and Constitutional Government trampled 
under foot, it becomes the bounden duty of every man among us who would be 
free, to look, like our Kevolutionary fathers, to the remedy of his own right- 
hand ; and, standing on his constitutional rights, to declare in the face of bastile 
or banishment, or still better, in the very front of hurtling battle, that ' Resis- 
tance TO TYRANTS IS OEEDIENCE TO GoD.' " 

Fortunately, the popular condemnation of these wicked schemes was so 
overwhelming, that in very despair they abandoned the plot, and the only 
portion of it which ripened to development was the Chicago attempt to set 
loose the rebel prisoners at Camp Douglass. 

REBEL APPRECIATION OF THE DEMOCRACY. 

It is not to be supposed that the rebels failed to recognize their friends. 
When Jacob Thompson could award to a Democratic member of Congress 
a part of the funds entrusted to him for the hire of assassins, incendiaries 
and propagators of pestilence, he showed his estimate of the value set upon 
the services of the Hen. Benjamin Wood, his paper and his party. Not- 
withstanding the reticence which was imperative in the public avowal of 
this mutual support, still its expression by rebel statesmen and journals 
was sufficiently frequent and open to show how confidently it was relied 
on as one of the elements of success, as soon as the stubborn valor and 
persistency of the North showed them the fallacy of their early contempt 
for the Federal power. 

Thus when Captain Maury, after the disasters of Gettysburg and Vicks- 
burg, sought to reassure the enemies of freedom in Europe, he did not 
rely upon the rebel armies, but drew his argument from the anticipated 
triumphs of the Democracy, as the sure forerunner of Confederate inde- 
pendence. In his letter of August 17, 18C3, to the London Times, he 
says: 

" Now York 13 threatening armed resistance to the Federal Government. 
New York is becoming the champion of Staterights in the North, and, to that 

extent, is taking Southern ground Vallandigham waits and watches 

over the border, pledged, if elected Governor of the State of Ohio, to array it 
against Lincoln and the war, and to go for peace. . . . Never were the chances 
of the South brighter. All that we have to do is to maintain the defensive, 
watch our chances, and strike, whenever there is an opportunity for a good 
stroke with the sword or with the pen." 

Maury but echoed the received opinions of his friends at home. The 
principal argument used to stimulate the rebel armies to follow up their 
victory at Chiekamauga, was that their success would insure that of the 
Democracy with whom they were virtually cooperating. Thus the llich- 



87 

mond Enquirer, of September 22, 1863; says that if the Federal troops 
could be 

" Defeated at Chattanooga and driven back upon Nashville, the Vallandigham 
men in Ohio could carry the election next month with little diiSculty ; the peace 
men in the United States would once more assert their manhood, and speak out 
as they did before the late disasters had choked their utterances." 

This was no temporary or exceptional policy. Just before the Chicago 
Convention, the rebel press again urged the importance of rebel victories 
to help the Democracy. The Richmond Dispatch of August 15, 1864, 
thus speculated on the future, not anticipating how thoroughly the Peace 
Democrats would control the party organization. 

" Reverses to the Yankees, in the next two months, should they bo serious, 
may bring about great changes. They alone can checkmate Lincoln and weaken 
his hand, which is quite strong as compared with the frantic organization led 
by the ridiculous Fremont, and the Democratic Party, broken in two by the 
peace and war divisions. With success to Lincoln^s armies, we are satisfied 
these elements do not exist in sufficient force to throw off the Lincoln yoke. Yet 
they may be strong enough, with the help of Southern victories, to dethrone 
the abominable Illinois ape. The armies of the South are indeed fighting for 
the liberties of the Northern States, as well as for those of the Southern.^' 

The hollowness of McClellan's pretensions to be a war candidate did 
not deceive these keen-eyed observers. The Richmond Enquirer, of Sep- 
tember 8, boasted that, 

" Every defeat of Lincoln's forces enures to the benefit of McClellan 

The influence of the South, more powerful in the shock of battle than when 
throwing her minority vote in an electoral college, will be cast in favor of Mc- 
Clellan by this indirect yet eflficacious means." 

So the Hon. W. W. Boyce, of South Carolina, in his letter of September 
29, 186-4, to Jefferson Davis, says : 

"But fortunately Mr. Lincoln and those he represents are not all of the 
North. There is a powerful party there which condemns his policy. That party 
is rational on the subject of slavery. It represents whatever of amity and con- 
servatism is left at the North. This party proposes that the war shall cease, 
at least temporarily, and that all the States should meet in amicable council, 
to make peace if possible. This is the most imposing demonstration in favor 

of peace made at the North since the war broke out Your only hope of 

peace is in the ascendancy of the Conservative Party North. Fortify that party 
if you can by victories, but do not neglect diplomacy."* 

Jefferson Davis took the advice. He did not neglect " diplomacy," for 
on October 3, his agents in Canada remitted to their friends in New 

•■■" Since the collapse of the Rebellion, Mr. Boyce has been putting on some pretended 
airs of Unionism. His true sentiments may be found in a speech which he delivered at 
Columbia, S. C, on the evening before the election of Mr. Lincoln in 1860. "I think 
the only policy for us is to arm as soon as we receive authentic intelligence of the elec- 
tion of Lincoln. . . . Wo will not submit, whether the other Southern States act with us 
or with our enemies." And at that time, Mr. Boyco was a member of Congress. 



38 

York, $10,000 in gold, on October 11, $5,000 in gold, and on November 
3, 4 and 8, 66,000 in currency. He also felt the importance of fortifying 
the Democratic Party by rebel victories, for in his Augusta speech of Octo- 
ber 3, he exclaimed : 

" We must beat Sherman, wc must march into Tennessee ; there we will drnw 
from 20,000 to 30,000 to our standard, and, so strengthened, we must push the 
euemy back to the banks of the Ohio, and thus give the peace party of the North 
an accretion no puny editorial can give." 

And the next day, at Columbia, S. C, he repeated the sentiment : 

"Let fresh victories crown our arms, and the peace party, if such there beat 
the North, can elect its candidate." 

So, after Mr. Lincoln's re-election, November 9, Mr. Foote, of Tennessee, 
declared in the Richmond Congress : 

"I say we have friends — good, true, valiant friends at the North. Every 
vote given for McClellan was for peace. Every vote given for McClellan was 
a vote against Lincoln's African policy. Every vote given for McClellan was 
a vote given for an armistice. If McClellan had been elected, he, Foote, was 
prepared to make from his scat a proposition for a convention of the sovereign 
States, North and South, and he believed the South wquld have secured from 
it peace and her independence." 

The " peace" thus confidently anticipated from McClellan's success by 
all parties at the South, was a peace founded on separation and indepen- 
dence. In Jefferson Davis' Augusta speech of October 3, he declared : 

" My first effort was for peace From time to time, I have repeated 

efi'orts to that end, but never, never, have I sought it on any other basis than 
independence." 

Even in the despondency of last winter, when the Rebel Commissioners 
met Mr. Lincoln at Fortress Monroe, the same high spirit was preserved. 
At the great meeting in the African church at Richmond, February 9, 
1865, to fire the Southern heart anew, Mr. Secretary .Benjamin, in rendering 
an account of the negotiations, told the disappointed people : 

"Our Commissioners, sent to confer with the enemy, went with a piece of 
blank paper filled with one word written by our President — Independence. . . 
I believe, contrary to the honorable gentleman who has preceded me, that 
when Blair came to Richmond, there was an opportunity for suspending fight- 
ing and bloodshed, in which time measures might be taken for restoration of 
peace, but none of us for a moment dreamed of reconstruction." 

Even still, now that the Confederacy and its independence have vanished 
like a dream, ambitious demagogues are striving to build up a reconstructed 
Democratic Party on its ruins. The red-handed accomplice of Booth, 
George N. Sanders, in his proclamation of June 1, " To the Patriots of the 
South," promises them the aid of the Northern Democracy in re-vindica- 



39 

iing their old supremacy, and evidently looks forward to the time when by 
this means he shall be enabled to insult a nation of mourners by his res- 
toration to a place in its councils. 

" The Northern conservatives cannot stand by motionless and see established, 
upon a pretext of punishing rebels, the agrarian precedent announced in Pres- 
ident Johnson's ' disability' proclamation You have the power to direct 

the future. Then call upon the men of the North, who acknowledge your equality 
in the Union, to meet you in convention in New York City, before the Northern 
fall elections, and there to organize with you a great national party, such as 
will deter the profligate President and his provost spies from laying their brutal 
hands upon unoffending men. women and children." 



This, then, is the record which the Democratic Party has made for itself 
during the war for the Union. It rejected from its communion the men 
whose patriotism set country above party, and surrendered its destinies to 
short-sighted and narrow-minded politicians, whose blind selfishness led 
them to see their advantage in sedition and treason. In a Eepublic, two 
parties are well nigh indispensable, and an honest, patriotic Opposition is in 
the highest degree desirable ; but an Opposition which, in a rebellion, takes 
sides with insurgents, forfeits for the future all claim upon public confi- 
dence, and must be content with the contemptuous obscurity accorded to un- 
holy ambition baffled in its T^^icked schemes. 

Our repulsive task has been to show, upon Democratic evidence, that 
this is the doom earned for itself by the Democratic Party. Yet another 
lesson may also be learned from the retrospect. Without a clear under- 
standing of the policy and efforts of the Opposition, it is impossible to ap- 
preciate the full glory of Mr. Lincoln's Administration, engaged in a 
desperate war with rebellion, and crippled at every turn by an active and 
unscrupulous faction, which at times threatened to paralyze utterly the 
arm of the nation. Nor, without considering the aims openly avowed, and 
the means unhesitatingly adopted by that faction, can we sufficiently admire 
the invariable good temper, magnanimity, firmness, and reverence for law, 
which set at naught their plots without sacrificing the rights and liberties 
of the nation. 



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